AUSTIN, Texas — Aug. 1 marks 60 years since the tragic shooting at the University of Texas at Austin’s famous tower. Fifteen people were killed and more than 30 were injured, making it one of the deadliest mass shootings in America at the time.
“We all looked at this tower with pride,” said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who was a UT student at the time of the shooting. “And yet, this time, it became a tower of tragedy.”
That day in 1966 is a dark part of Austin’s history. The mass shooting took place from the observation deck of the tower.
“The whole event was such a shock,” Doggett said.
The Democratic congressman remembers where he stood that fateful day.
“I was at the old business school across the street on Speedway from Gregory Gymnasium,” Doggett said.
He had parked at a different location from his usual spot.
“Had I not gone the way I went, I would have been right in the thick of this,” Doggett said.
As he walked to his car, he heard unusual noises but didn’t know the sound was caused by gunfire.
“No sooner had I reached home, that I began to hear the broadcast over the noon news of what happened,” Doggett said.
Decades later, it remains one of the worst mass shootings in American history.
“We had not had anything of this magnitude in Texas or really in the country as a whole,” Doggett said.
Because of how uncommon these kinds of incidents were back then, some students like Forrest Preece didn’t take heed to a warning about the shooter. He was almost hit by a bullet when he stepped outside.
“The concept that there’d be somebody on top of the tower, shooting down at innocent people wandering around, that just didn’t compute,” Preece said.
Doggett connected how rare mass shootings were at that time to a modern-day era of violence that still affects Americans 60 years later.
“The broader problem of an amazing 273 mass shootings in America over this year indicates our significant need for gun safety legislation, which sadly, seems to be blocked in Congress and in the Texas Legislature,” Doggett said.
While the UT Tower undergoes renovations and modernization that has covered some of the bullet holes left behind, the names of those 15 who died remain inscribed on a memorial at the Tower Garden.
“I believe it’s important to view it as a sacred place, honoring those who were lost and those who acted with such courage,” Doggett said.
And now, 60 years since that tragic day, the congressman believes it’s as important as ever to find ways to prevent these kinds of tragedies from continuing to be the norm.